TOKYO — Police have arrested a high-ranking yakuza over claims he sent workers to the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant for the clean-up without a license.

Officers in Yamagata Prefecture were questioning Yoshinori Arai, a 40-year-old senior member of a local yakuza group affiliated to the Sumiyoshi-kai crime syndicate, a police spokesman said Friday. [link to www.japantoday.com] .

GLP's best Fuku thread: Thread: *** Fukushima *** and other nuclear-----updates and linkstwitter: #citizenperth“If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on it, I would use the first 55 minutes determining the proper question to ask, for once I knew the proper question, I could solve the problem in less than five minutes.”- Albert Einstein

Over the course of the last year while the San Onofre reactors have been shut down by steam generator failures, readers may have visited and read the NRC’s representation of the steam generator issues in Unit 2 as described on their website.[1]

They too may have felt that the description as is, stands in direct contrast to the actual sequence and severity of events, and provides only a partial description of the outage and subsequent investigations. [link to enformable.com] .

It’s been a year now since defective, expensive and brand-new steam generators failed at the San Onofre nuclear plant, leaving California regulators scrambling to figure out not only how to keep the lights on, but who should pay for this $700 million fiasco. The alphabet soup of responsible parties – Southern California Edison, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the California Public Utilities Commission – failed to find the flaws, despite the warnings from watchdogs.

Frankly, since the regulatory agencies have failed, we think there ought to be a law that asks utilities how much it will cost:

• To pay for indefinite storage of thousands of tons of radioactive waste on our coast, because there is no short or long term federal solution;

• To pay for independent seismic studies and – if even possible – the costs of retrofits to withstand earthquakes in a post-Fukushima world;

• To pay for expanded emergency planning zones extending from the current 12 to 18 miles to the 50 miles the U.S. NRC recommended to Americans living in Japan after Fukushima;

• To pay for alternatives to the use of a million gallons of seawater each minute to cool the reactors in order to meet both state and EPA standards and avoiding killing fish and larvae in our waters;

• To compensate homeowners or business coverage in the event of a radioactive release, because the federal $12.6 billion liability limit is a drop in the bucket compared with over $100 billion in claims already facing Japan since its disaster.

Disgraceful.If they don't care about them..they sure as HELL don't care about us..

Over 150 U.S. service members say Fukushima radiation has triggered medical issues — Now Defense Department abandons medical registry, leaving them on own [link to enenews.com]

[snip]

The decision to cease updating the registry means there will be no way to determine if patterns of health problems emerge among the members of the Marines, Army, Air Force, Corps of Engineers, and Navy stationed at 63 installations in Japan with their families. In addition, it leaves thousands of sailors and Marines in the USS Ronald Reagan Carrier Strike Group 7 on their own when it comes to determining if any of them are developing problems caused by radiation exposure.

So far, however, more than 150 service men and women who participated in the rescue mission and have since developed a variety of medical issues – including tumors, tremors, internal bleeding, and hair loss – which they feel were triggered by their exposure to radiation. They do not blame the Navy for their predicament, but are joined in an expanding law suit against the Tokyo Electric Power Company, TEPCO, for providing false information to the US officials about the extent of spreading radiation from its stricken reactors at Fukushima. And the decision by the Defense Department to abandon the registry leaves them on their own. [...]

service member statement.... more at link

“Normal outside radiation exposure is between five and 10 CCPM. And that’s from the sun. At Atsugi [in Kanagawa Prefecture, ~250 kilometers from Fukushima Daiichi], the background readings were between 200 and 300 CCPM in the air. It was all over. The water was radiated. The ground was radiated. The air was radiated.” -Michael Sebourn, senior chief mechanic for the helicopter squadron based at Atsugi

Fairewinds: Website is under verified DDS attack — Another nuclear expert’s site had similar problems — Both involved with San Onofre issue — “What is the nuke industry hiding?” [link to enenews.com]

[snip]

All experts in Fairewinds Associates current expert witness cases have had to sign onerous non-disclosure documents for all current case load. Amazing to me that nuke plant owners can deny the public its right to know.

GLP's best Fuku thread: Thread: *** Fukushima *** and other nuclear-----updates and linkstwitter: #citizenperth“If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on it, I would use the first 55 minutes determining the proper question to ask, for once I knew the proper question, I could solve the problem in less than five minutes.”- Albert Einstein

"...removing the melted fuel by 2021-36..."what...? they mean that they hope someone invents the technology to remove the hottest and most toxic material in the world by then, or that it'll be cool enough to move by then...? b.s. dream on tepco.

TOKYO — Police have questioned a former head of the nuclear safety body regarding possible criminal charges over the Fukushima nuclear crisis, news reports said Sunday.

Prosecutors interviewed Haruki Madarame, former chief of the Nuclear Safety Commission who was responsible for giving the government technical advice about the crisis, national broadcaster NHK quoted sources as saying.

Fukushima residents have filed a criminal complaint with prosecutors against Madarame on suspicion of professional negligence which resulted in deaths and injuries, the public broadcaster said.

The complaint alleges that Madarame was responsible for a delay in announcing data predicting how radiation would spread from the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant, it said. [link to www.japantoday.com] .

An upcoming documentary film chronicles the experiences of communities hosting nuclear facilities in Japan, and the high price paid by some of them after the nuclear disaster in 2011, including farmers and fishermen unable to market produce because of radioactive contamination.

"I hope I can show that we cannot coexist with nuclear power and it is the duty of each of us to make a choice about energy in the future," said Kei Shimada, director of "Fukushima, Rokkasho and Message to the Future." [link to english.kyodonews.jp] .

With the Tevatron in mothballs, the Brookhaven Laboratory collider now faces possible closure due to budget cutbacks.

Until recently, the American particle collider was a thriving species spanning a variety of habitats from coast to coast. But now it finds itself on the endangered list.

Since 2008 the number of colliders in the U.S. has dwindled from four to one. And the last surviving member of the species, the Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, N.Y., may soon fall victim to the same budgetary blight that has already felled so many other towering scientific facilities. [link to www.scientificamerican.com] .

A senior officer and manager with the nation’s largest fleet of nuclear reactors “deliberately” short-funded Exelon’s financial reserves for shutting down reactors across the country between 2005 and 2009, including eight near Delaware, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said in a letter released Thursday.

The agency outlined its claims in a request that Exelon officials attend a closed-door meeting as early as this month on the case and warned of potential sanctions for problems with the accounts. [link to www.delawareonline.com] .

"...removing the melted fuel by 2021-36..."what...? they mean that they hope someone invents the technology to remove the hottest and most toxic material in the world by then, or that it'll be cool enough to move by then...? b.s. dream on tepco.

Quoting: Anonymous Coward 26658678

What they mean is.. hell will freeze over first, making it cool enough.. hehe

"...removing the melted fuel by 2021-36..."what...? they mean that they hope someone invents the technology to remove the hottest and most toxic material in the world by then, or that it'll be cool enough to move by then...? b.s. dream on tepco.

Quoting: Anonymous Coward 26658678

What they mean is.. hell will freeze over first, making it cool enough.. hehe

Quoting: Waterbug

right! im getting it now.... ...well they could be watching the suns activity (or lack of) -cycle 23 minimum had lowest radiance ever and this maximum is lower than a minimum...(an upcoming maunders minimum?) so yeh! banking on hell freezing over.... lol or its 'Gods' interevention to the mess we've made?

"...removing the melted fuel by 2021-36..."what...? they mean that they hope someone invents the technology to remove the hottest and most toxic material in the world by then, or that it'll be cool enough to move by then...? b.s. dream on tepco.

Quoting: Anonymous Coward 26658678

What they mean is.. hell will freeze over first, making it cool enough.. hehe

Quoting: Waterbug

right! im getting it now.... ...well they could be watching the suns activity (or lack of) -cycle 23 minimum had lowest radiance ever and this maximum is lower than a minimum...(an upcoming maunders minimum?) so yeh! banking on hell freezing over.... lol or its 'Gods' interevention to the mess we've made?

Quoting: Anonymous Coward 33589501

Looking that way. The solar maximum is not much tospeak of. I hope the energy that should have released doesn't come in one big shot, unexpectedly..I haven't heard or read anything to that effect, butstranger things have happened.I'm looking for clues.

By the end of the day the anti-nuclear activists will be famous and infamous, their moxie lionized and pilloried. Ripples of consternation will flow in all directions from Washington, D.C., as elected leaders demand to know how an 82-year-old nun and two middle-aged companions outwitted the security system at, supposedly, one of the most secure sites of the United States government. Meanwhile, anti-nuclear organizations will hail the Y-12 transgressors as heroes.

Their defense at trial, the trio says, will include an examination of nuclear treaties the U.S. has allegedly broken.

The pilot was instructed to jettison the nuclear bomb before attempting to land, so he dropped the weapon into the shallow waters off the Georgia coast, near Tybee Island, on Feb. 5, 1958.Despite a search that lasted more than a month, the bomb, 11 feet long and 3 feet in diameter and weighing more than 7,000 pounds, was never recovered. The Air Force determined it was “irretrievably lost.”

In 1998, retired Air Force Col. Derek Duke helped renew interest in finding the bomb. He helped form a salvage company to mount another search in 2004, but he never found the weapon.“It was determined since we could not find it, it would still be considered irretrievably lost,” he said Tuesday.

But Duke, who lives in Statesboro, about 75 miles from where the bomb was ditched, is convinced that if the federal government conducted another search, using the newest technology, the bomb would be found. And he believes it is simply a matter of convincing the right government officials that finding the weapon is long overdue.

But according to Jerry Brandon, a former staff member at Sandia National Laboratories, an engineering and science laboratory in New Mexico under contract to the U.S. Department of Energy, the public should not be concerned about the bomb exploding.“The worst thing that would happen is, it would leak plutonium,” he said.

Clark Alexander, professor of geology at Skidaway Institute of Oceanography, a University System of Georgia research institute on Skidaway, says it is likely the bomb is buried 20 to 30 feet deep in sediment.

Despite the radioactive material and an estimated 400 pounds of TNT in the bomb that is becoming more unstable as time passes, Alexander says the best course of action is to leave the weapon where it lays. He has no concerns about adverse impacts to the environment.

If the bomb is buried deep in sand, Alexander says it is likely the bomb casing has already corroded and has leaked nuclear material. It is also likely a nuclear leak won’t be noticed because of strong tides flushing the material to sea.

SYNOPSIS: Many children in Fukushima were never evacuated after the nuclear meltdown on March 11, 2011. Now the number of Fukushima children found to have thyroid cysts and nodules is increasing. What will this mean for their future?